Nuzlocke'd
by Lencionim
Summary: Lissa finds herself stranded in an unfamiliar world, where a six-tailed fox won't stop following her and a guy named Bill is too generous with his phone number for anyone's sanity. (Silly ONESHOT. Don't take it too seriously.)


On a nondescript day in some town nobody has ever heard of, a girl named Lissa was taking a steamy shower. She stepped out, turned the water off, wrapped a towel around herself, and regarded her physique in a mirror, because that's what everyone does at the beginning of a story or the end of a shower. I'll spare you the details of what she looks like.

Because her laptop was updating, she had left it on while she showered in the hopes it would be done by the time she was out, and it was. As she dried her hair with the towel bunched in one hand, she entered her password in awkward, single keystrokes with the other, mistakenly typing the word NUZLOCKE instead of what her password actually was.

Because this is fiction, that caused the world to change. Lights and magic happened. It was unexpected and exhilarating. Also, scary.

Lissa found herself standing in grass so tall it reached her hips, more-or-less naked if you didn't count the towel drooping off her head. She ducked down, cheek-red-embarrassed, and wrapped herself properly again. Then she tried to figure out where she was.

A nearby sign read ROUTE 35. A separate sign nailed below the first onto the same pole had an arrow pointing down the dirt path next to the grass and TO GOLDENROD CITY in text that shone in the sunlight. Lissa squinted at the signs confusedly until something coarse and warm rubbed her ankle. She squealed and leapt out of the grass onto the path when she heard a sniffing sound and felt something like a snout squish against her foot.

A golden fox with six tails emerged from the grass after her, tilting its head. Lissa held her breath. The little fox took a tentative step closer and then sat. Lissa exhaled when she realized it probably wasn't going to do her any harm. Forgetting the fox for a moment, she looked down the path. There was a building not too far in the distance, past all the dust.

The fox followed her all the way there, and not without incident. Every single person they walked past stopped them, but each time when they realized Lissa didn't have something called a TRAINER CARD, they gave her and her fox companion a weary look before going about their business as if they hadn't noticed the pair in the first place.

On the way into GOLDENROD CITY, an attendant gave Lissa a change of clothes and told her where she was, suggesting she visit the POKEMON CENTER in town. The attendant also commented on how cute Lissa's VULPIX was, and how lucky she must have been to catch a SHINY. Lissa nodded politely, understanding little if anything, and found the POKEMON CENTER as directed.

The nurse there was very patient in clearing everything up for Lissa, and because PROFESSOR OAK was in town for his radio show, Lissa received a TRAINER CARD of her own soon after everything was explained. A cute guy named BILL even gave Lissa his number. She blushed and everything. It was super romantic. VULPIX didn't seem to approve. It turned its nose up at him when he tried to pet it and darted behind Lissa's leg.

"You should nickname it," said Bill.

"Huh?"

"Your vulpix. If a trainer gives a pokemon a nickname, the bond between the pokemon and the trainer grows stronger."

"Oh." Lissa looked down at VULPIX. "I guess I'll call it Nuzzle."

VULPIX made a face. Bill chuckled.

"What? You don't like it?"

VULPIX turned away.

"Maybe something a little less cute," suggested Bill. "I'm willing to bet this one has a BOLD nature."

Lissa crossed her arms thoughtfully, gnawing on the inside of her cheek. "What about Flare?"

VULPIX accepted its nickname with a happy cry.

It wasn't long before Lissa had an entire team, and before anyone could warn her of the dangers of it, she was challenging trainers and gyms, readying herself for the ELITE FOUR. She backtracked first, taking the routes to challenge BUGSY and FALKNER before she circled around to head back to GOLDENROD and face WHITNEY.

It was there she suffered her first great loss. Her whole team fell before Whitney's MILTANK, all except Flare, who was immune to ATTRACT thanks to being female. Five pokemon died that day. There were buckets of tears. It was dramatic and awful.

Lissa purchased a FIRESTONE after that, and Flare evolved into the most beautiful nine-tailed fox she had ever seen, purple-gray with blue-tipped tails. Bill, feeling sorry for Lissa after she lost her team, gave her a male EEVEE, which refused an evolution stone and showed real promise regardless of the fact that Lissa wouldn't let it participate in battles with anything over LEVEL 20.

It wasn't long before it morphed into an UMBREON beneath the moon near MORTY's gym. From then on, Lissa called it Nox.

It was during a fishing outing in OLIVINE CITY when Lissa told Bill the truth.

"I'm not from this world, you know. I came from somewhere else."

"That doesn't surprise me."

Lissa ignored the tug on the line, letting a CHINCHOU pull free. Bill crouched by her feet with his arms draped over his knees, balanced on his haunches, looking out to sea where lights glimmered from the opposite shore so far away, or maybe it was the STARYU dancing on the waves. The expression on his face made her think of movie stars and nobility. She felt her heart thump.

"I always knew you were different. I knew that from when we first met." Bill looked up at her, smiling as if it were a good thing that she wasn't exactly normal.

"Does it bother you? I mean, my being different and all."

Flare and Nox turned to look Bill's way, both of them staring fixedly. Bill threw his head back and laughed, switching positions so his feet dangled near the water.

"Not in the least bit."


End file.
